Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/121369
Sarasota News Leader April 12, 2013 feathers missing and jutting every which way, while train feathers are just beginning to poke out, like crocuses through the melting snows. At this stage, neither raggedy bird will make the cover of WWD or GQ! No, the peahen is beautiful in her own way. Mother Nature designed her to blend in with the ground and bushes while she nests and incubates her eggs, endowing her with an iridescent green crown and neck feathers intermingling with rich pearl-gray and earth tones. I found a good video illustrating this. It was filmed outside the gift shop at the Los Angeles County Arboretum. In it, a mama peahen's seven precocial chicks hatch. It gives one an appreciation of how beautiful and caring a mother she is and demonstrates to perfection the term "precocial." Yes, that is the term I keep using to describe how some chicks just pop out of that egg all feathered, open-eyed, able to hold up their heads and walk and peck at food! They are so amazingly different from us altricial birds. Warning! This video is 14 minutes long. I think 2 1/2 minutes of viewing time will convey the points I have made. Page 84 group of those nice, brainy college kids on spring break occupied the van in front of us. The Maine license plate read, "Vacationland." I thought it was awfully sweet of these kids to give up their vacation and drive all the way to Siesta Key to enrich our county's coffers. The van's engine was turned off, but the van gently rocked from the blare of the rap music emanating from it. The lyrics had a lot to do with killing a pig. I assumed the kids were planning to do a big luau at the grills by our key's beautiful No. 1 beach in the USA. Mr. Bored and a lot of other drivers were wildly supportive of this idea and expressed their enthusiasm by loudly honking and occasionally yelling something I could not hear over the music and honking. Now, safely perched on my old oak limb and quietly reflecting on this wonderfully adventurous and educational day, I took great pride in two accomplishments. First, I not only survived my passage to India but also immensely enjoyed it and all its exotic beauty. Second, I never once pruriently speculated on how Ian Fleming might have toyed with the word "peaIt was time to break the enchantment and cock." leave India to return home. Mr. Bored was closing his car trunk on a handsome Meyer And, as long as I am not thinking about that lemon tree and, of all things, a Miracle Fruit ... Did you know that one of the most famous bush. The Meyer will flourish on our key, but examples of the naughty double entendre in the air is probably too saline for the Miracle. English literature occurs in Chapter Nine of But it is an unusually intriguing plant and Oliver Twist? That is the chapter in which Fagin begins training Oliver to become a pickworth the try. pocket. It involves handkerchiefs and a lad I slept the return trip until we reached the named Charley Bates. I think you have to be turnoff to Siesta Key's south bridge. Despite a 14-year-old schoolboy to truly appreciate it. his well-laid plans, Mr. Bored's timing was off. We sat in traffic for a while, a great while. A Otus %